Oumar Farouk Sesay is the son of Alhaji Alhusine Sesay and Haja Oumou Kultum Sesay. He was born in Masingbi in the Tonkolili district. He attended Magburaka Government Secondary School for boys and later did his sixth form in Ahmadiyya School in Freetown. He studied political science and philosophy at Fourah Bay College. Sesay was resident playwright of Bai Bureh Theatre in the eighties. He has written several plays and serves as a columnist for multiple newspapers. He has been published in many anthologies of Sierra Leonean poets, including Lice in the Lion's Mane, Songs That Pour the Heart and Kalashnikov In The Sun. His first volume of poems, Salute To The Remains of a Peasant was published in 2007 in the US by PublishAmerica. He was Cadbury Visiting Fellow in 2009 at the Centre for West African Studies in the University of Birmingham. He is currently working in the private sector-general manager of his own company. He also runs a publishing company called Karatha Publishers which focuses on publishing Sierra Leonean writers. Sesay's latest work is excerpted here and the landscape of Sierra Leone's decade old war seems to drape most of the poems.

Teun Voeten is a cultural anthropologist, writer and photojournalist. The photo featured here is of three-year old Memuna Mansarah, who was shot by rebels when they withdrew from Freetown, Sierra Leone, early 1999. Her arm had to be amputated. The photo appears in his book How de Body? One Man's Terrifying Journey through an African War. He has covered the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, former Yugoslavia, Sudan, Sierra Leone and Colombia among others.

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